signagelive and Retail partners Imagesound sponsored the Retail Week Conference 2010 at Park Plaza Hotel, Victoria, London.

Retail Week Conference is THE event to attend for executives in the Retail sector and the topics and agenda for the conference are set by Retailers and not the organisers.

The two day event seen Retail leaders such as Charlie Mayfield, Chairman of John Lewis Partnership and Stuart Rose, Chairman of  M&S take to the stage and cover a range of topics from the economy through to the challenges facing Retail going forwards.

From a Digital Media in Retail perspective, a recurring theme across the two days was the importance of multi-channel strategy to retail ensuring consumers connect with products and brands through every possible ‘touch point’ from ‘iPhone to Interactive TV’  as one speaker said.

Another recurring topic was the need for retailers to differnitiate from competitors by providing exceptional service and ‘retail theatre’.

Whilst I was disappointed that digital signage, interactivity or in-store audio was not specifically covered during the two day event, the opportunity for our industry to meet retailers objectives in the coming years is exciting. Hopefully, next year one or two of the keynote speakers will be talking about how the use of digital media in-store has been instrumental in assisting them to deliver their multi-channel strategy.

Tweets from #rwc2010

DailyDOOH coverage of Imagesound/signagelive at #rwc2010

The signagelive ‘unbranded’ offering is available in two variants, as follows:

1. Hosted service – a complete white label SaaS service hosted on the signagelive infrastructure.
2. Self-hosted service – we will assist in the setup of signagelive in your datacenter and provide the support necessary to enable you to deliver a signagelive powered digital signage network to your distributors, resellers and customers.

If you’re are a hardware manufacture or major organisation looking to enter the exciting, high growth digital signage sector then please contact sales@signagelive.com with your details and we will be delighted to assist you to build your digital signage offering.

Jason Cremins – Founder and CEO of signagelive has signed up as a contributor to The Digital Signage Expert website, his first article ‘The Digital Signage Evolution‘ has been published and looks at the move from proprietary digital signage solutions, to a world of open standards and collaboration that is driving down costs and giving customers real choice when selecting the products and vendors required for their digital signage network.

The globally recognised DailyDOOH has recently written a review of signagelive as part of their Digital Signage Top 10 feature in the run up to their new top 10 being announced Tuesday 23rd February at the Digital Signage Expo in Las Vegas.

The full review can be seen here, however the comment we really liked and appreciated is:

Signagelive is like all the products in our #DSTop10 a good product, simple to use, easy to setup. What we really like about signagelive though is that the company itself is very easy to deal with and do business with. We haven’t ever heard a bad word said about dealing with these guys and VARs seem to love ‘em – judging at least by the number of VARs who have dropped other products to sign up with them (Kreatevee most recently).

Thanks to the DailyDooh for the write up and we await with anticipation the new #DSTop10 announcement next week.

Audio visual distributor AVM has announced that it will be distributing the award winning signagelive from Remote Media through its specialist digital signage division SignLabs.

Software as a Service – Delivering Digital Signage over the Internet
Signagelive allows anyone anywhere in the world to log in and manage their digital signage network as it’s managed through remote servers on the internet. Signagelive uses standard Internet connectivity to deliver and manage digital media content. No requirements to setup FTP servers, Ports and Firewalls ensure maximum adoption from IT managers.

Zero onsite configuration: Installation couldn’t be simpler. Plug in the power and connect to the Internet and you can begin managing the signagelive® device immediately saving huge amounts of time and money. Security is not an issue as the players are looking out of the firewall to the internet server. There are a whole range of reporting and pro-active monitoring tools to make managing the system extremely simple.

Add to that fast deployment timescales, zero onsite configuration, totally secure hosting and automatic software upgrades and you can start to really see the appeal.

It also benefits end users, with the ability to use any type of content created in any application, and a focus on simplicity with touch screens and one click operations which increases user acceptance.

According to Mark Nisbet, AVM’s MD, “SignLabs is growing rapidly and the addition of signagelive really strengthens our portfolio. We will be offering the software preloaded on ultra small form PCs.”

Jason Cremins – CEO of Remote Media said ”AVM has a great reputation for working closely with resellers to deliver turn-key digital signage solutions. Adding AVM as a signagelive Distributor provides us with the focus and expertise required to strengthen our offering to the AV sector.

For more details about signagelive contact 01252 510363 or visit www.signlabs.net

Press Contact details:
Karen O’Mahoney, Market Energy 07545 321107 Email Karen@marketenergy.co.uk

Kreateevee will bundle their content, consultancy and support packages with signagelive’s SaaS digital signage software to provide an encompassing digital signage solution to the mass market and also the price-sensitive retail sector.

Signagelive will work closely with Kreateevee as a Strategic Partner to expand the Global reach of signagelive in to the Asian market through their offices in Malaysia, Vietnam and soon Singapore.

On announcement of the partnership, Stewart Chen, Director at Kreateevee said:

“Digital signage is still not a highly regarded communication platform in many parts of Asia. We are trying to make this nice-to-have medium into a key part of many companies overall marketing strategy. Together with Jason and his team from Signagelive, I believe a future of quality content and proven digital signage software will be delivered sooner and more importantly, with an Asian price tag.”

Jason Cremins, CEO of signagelive added:

“We have been really impressed by the digital signage projects secured by Kreateevee and the rapid growth of their company in the Asian market

We are delighted that Kreateevee have selected signagelive as their preferred digital signage platform to lead their future business expansion. We have worked closely with Stewart and his team throughout the evaluation process and look forward to maintaining a close working relationship and assisting them to secure large scale digital signage networks powered by signagelive.”
 

Notes to Editors:

Kreatevee Background :
Kreateevee is an award winning communications agency in in-store digital and interactive media. Their solutions range from digital signage, interactive kiosks, interactive projection, seamless videowall, directional speakers, multi touch table to multimedia content. All which are carefully designed to elevate customers’ experience.
For two consecutive years, Kreateevee Sdn Bhd has been a proud winner in the prestigious Deloitte Technology Fast 500 Asia Pacific – one of the region’s most comprehensive & respected rankings of fast-growing technology companies in Asia Pacific region, including Australia, China (Hong Kong), India, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore, Taiwan & Thailand.

Features of the signagelive platform:
Low cost, easy to use Web‐based Digital Signage for the management of media assets, creating playlists/screen layouts and the deployment of content to limitless devices that can be located anywhere around the world ‐ all managed through your web browser:

• True SaaS (Software–as‐a–Service) Digital Signage Application: Enabling your Digital Signage network to be managed from anywhere that you can connect to the Internet via your web browser.
• Zero set up costs: Unlike other Digital Signage applications, there are no setup fees associated with signagelive®.
• No servers needed: Save £000’s on implementing and maintaining your own servers.
• Real‐time reporting: Run live reports on your hardware, assets, users, playlists and impressions to prove content playback.
• Mortality check‐ins: Each signagelive® enabled device lets the signagelive® server know it’s alive and working as it should be, which can be monitored in real‐time.
• Pro‐active network monitoring: Tools to allow you to check the signagelive® device has the correct content and has checked in when it should have.
• Value added opportunities: Offer value added services to grow your business around signagelive®.
• Automatic Software Updates: All signagelive® devices are automatically updated with the latest release without the associated costs of sending engineers onsite to upgrade.
• Zero onsite configuration: Installation couldn’t be simpler. Plug in the power and connect to the Internet and you can begin managing the signagelive® device immediately.
• Layout controller: Full control of the screen layout and where your content is positioned.
• Rich asset support: Use just about any type of content created in any application making use of current design skills you have with mainstream content packages like Flash or Photoshop.
• IT friendly: Each device simply needs access to the Internet! No VPN’s are required and no special ports need to be opened. Fully support for cache and proxy servers to minimise Internet bandwidth usage, signagelive® is kind to network bandwidth.
• Fast deployment timescales: Multi‐site networks can be deployed and live within minutes.
• One size fits all: Doesn’t matter if your network comprises of a single device or 50,000 devices located worldwide!
• Worry free: No worries about reliability, security and software upgrades, it’s all taken care of for you. signagelive® is hosted in secure data centres providing a guaranteed service.
• On‐demand service: signagelive® is always on and available through the Internet 24/7/365.
• Easy to use: A focus on simplicity ensures user acceptance which increases the success of your Digital Media network.

For further information, please contact signagelive:

Contact: Jason Cremins – CEO
Tel:  +44 (0) 1799 533471
Mobile:  +44 (0) 7966 279018
Email:  jason@signagelive.com�
Website: www.signagelive.com
Blog:  http://blog.signagelive.com
For further information, please contact Kreateevee:

Contact: Stewart Chen – Director
Tel:  +60173355183
Email:  stewart@kreateevee.com�
Website: www.kreateevee.com

We were delighted to support Ginsbury on their stand at ISE 2010 last week in Amsterdam.

The 46″ in-window unit from Ginsbury shown in the video consists of a High-Brightness LCD with integrated PC running signagelive and optional 3G connectivity. The entire unit is thermally managed ensuring optimum use in high temperature sunlight conditions.

If you are interested in receiving information and pricing, Ginsbury can be contacted through their wesbite www.ginsbury.co.uk

The signagelive virtual player enables a low cost solution targeted at the gap in the digital signage market between the ‘lock and load’ compact flash media players and the full functionality offered by the “signagelive display edition” running on a PC or Display with integrated Windows PC.

Now ultra low cost, solid-state digital signage players and small format LCD devices can be managed remotely alongside PC devices using the signagelive platform over a standard fixed line or mobile Internet connection.

With major hardware manufacturers developing and launching SMIL devices including Advantech, Mitsubishi and Viewsonic, the range of products available for use with the signagelive virtual player is growing daily.

Signagelive enables video and still image content to be scheduled, deployed and played back on the SMIL devices including dynamically updated content from Screenfeed (www.screenfeed.com), Signchannel (www.signchannel.com) and Sky News in the UK.

In addition, the new “signagelive message manager” feature enables simple textual changes to preset templates to be made by multiple users contributing to the content displayed on the SMIL range of players, creating a truly dynamic digital signage solution.

To compliment the support for the IAdea SMIL devices, the signagelive virtual player client (developed using Adobe Flex) can be downloaded and installed on any Windows, Mac or Linux device and will emulate a SMIL device 100% with playback and logging of all Media.

For local sites with SMIL devices that are installed standalone without networking, the signagelive virtual player client will enable a USB storage device to be inserted and media content to be transferred, enabling local USB update of multiple SMIL devices updating media content and retrieval and upload of playback log files to the signagelive platform.

With a suggested End User Price of $10 per month per signagelive virtual player, the combined offering from IAdea and signagelive provides an extremely cost effective and scalable digital signage solution.

Signagelive will be officially launching the signagelive virtual player at ISE 2010 on Stand #12F80 and is interested in meeting potential resellers keen to become approved partners for this exciting proposition.

Having worked closely with signagelive on the development of the virtual player, Rex Chen – Executive Vice President of IAdea commented on the signagelive virtual player launch:

“IAdea actively supports open standards in designing digital signage media appliances. Last year we saw tremendous sales growth in our Full-HD appliance, which supports the W3C SMIL standard for advanced scheduling and screen layout management. This year IAdea is rolling out with multiple new devices, including the XDS-101 photo frame-based “Digital Signboard” appliance supporting SMIL programming. We are excited to see leading software and services, such as the paradigm-shifting signagelive cloud services, actively embracing the Open Standard approach for digital signage. We believe open standards will allow users to select and combine the best products in the ecosystem to significantly improve the return on investment.”

Jason Cremins, CEO of signagelive added:

“We are really excited about the launch of the new ’signagelive virtual player’ and extending the power of signagelive to support the IAdea SMIL range of non-PC digital signage devices. The collaboration between IAdea and signagelive offers an unrivalled price performance for delivering multi-site, networked and managed digital signage through a standard web browser anywhere in the world without the need to install and manage your own servers and software.

With a suggested end user price of $399 for the IAdea XDS-101 10″ LCD SMIL device and $10 per month for a signagelive virtual player licence, end users can finally realise the full potential of remotely managed digital signage at a price unobtainable from any other solution.”

The Editor’s Award for signagelive is acknowledgement of the ongoing and continuous chain of innovation that has supported the development of the product. In essence, signagelive is a ‘software as a service’ platform for digital signage that enables the upload, scheduling, delivery, playback and reporting of digital media content over fixed and mobile Internet connections, and now the 3G phone network. But it is actually much more than this statement implies, signagelive represents a front end to a wide array of applications and content resources available to its subscribers.

There is very little it can’t do: from a web browser interface, signagelive can be used to acquire, distribute and manage media, with resources including feeds from news organisations, design agencies and other third parties. Signagelive is compatible with Twitter and other social networks. It requires no server hardware or software. It doesn’t need to be installed or commissioned, and is therefore entirely adaptable according to the needs of its users. This year will see new applications based on Media RSS technology and evolve as a means of driving video walls.

Always interesting and constantly evolving, signagelive is definitely worthy of an Editor’s Award.

We are pleased to add the AOpen DE45-PRO to the rapidly expanding list of signagelive accredited hardware digital signage devices.

The Digital Engine DE45-PRO is an easy-to-install media device with built-in processor and memory combining integrated graphic and latest Intel Core 2 Duo technology to suit the most demanding Hi-Definitiondigital signage application with affordable pricing.

Add signagelive and you have an instant digital signage device for quick and easy deployment. Measuring just 166mm (W) x 48mm(H) x 157mm (D) and weighing 1.23kg this lightweight device is suitable for just about any environment.

Key Features:

• Intel Core 2 DUO CPU and 1G DDR memory pre-installed
• Quick bay on the front panel (for 2.5” SATA storage and CF slot with IDE
  interface)
• Full HD content support with affordability
• HDMI out
• Twin VGA to support dual display
• Media content support up to 1080p
• Expansion flexibility
• MiniCard slot x1 for optional Wireless 802.11b/g/n, or TV tuner card
• Reliability for application market
• RS232 x2, Giga-LAN x2, USB 2.0 x4
• 20V 90W adapter

Click for further information